Swallow

First there was Lucozade, a glucose drink that claimed to 'aid recovery' and was served in hospitals. Now there is an explosion in 'smart' energy drinks, all with huge marketing budgets and seemingly miraculous health properties. Is it just a load of bull (red or otherwise), or are these sexily-packaged slurpers really the elixir of modern life? David Newnham investigates.

Friday 30 June 2000 20.39 EDT
First published on Friday 30 June 2000 20.39 EDT

Once upon a time, or a year or two either side of 1655 if you need a more accurate fix, there must surely have been somebody in my shoes. All around him, he could see that a new kind of drink was catching on. It contained not a trace of alcohol, yet already it had its own culture, its own rituals and its own snobberies. There were those who swore that it was subverting the health of the nation. And there were those who whispered that soon the whole world would be drinking it.

Yet not a single drop had passed his lips. What did it taste like? He asked his wife, but she hadn't a clue. He asked his friends, "How did it make you feel?" (for he had heard that people drank it chiefly for its effects), but it was evident from their vague replies that he kept the wrong sort of company. Where, then, could he sample it? That was easy, since an outlet was now on every other street.

And so it came to pass that my imaginary forebear entered his first coffee house and, somewhat belatedly, sampled for himself the drink that was on everyone's lips. And when his head had stopped spinning, he looked around him at the new world he had just entered and wondered how so much could have been bubbling under without his ever having noticed it.

Stepping into an off-licence to buy my very first can of "functional energy drink" is not in itself an eye-opening experience. I half expect the man behind the counter to wink knowingly as I hand him my £1.20. Hasn't this stuff been described as everything from over-the-counter Viagra to a legal amphetamine? Don't people mix it with spirits before committing every outrageous act known to society? But he hands me my change without comment. Only later does that sense of revelation come, when I switch on my computer, summon up my favourite search engine and key in the name on the side of the can. Red Bull.

WHOOOSH! That's the air coming out of my lungs as a high-speed lift drops me down 70 storeys and deposits me in an underground command centre whose existence I had never even suspected. Not literally, of course. But that's how I feel on entering my first energy-drink website - like a secret agent in a silly thriller who suddenly finds himself in a labyrinth of corridors and has to think quickly because he can hear footsteps approaching. Picking a door at random, I slip into the unknown.

"In typical Red Bull style," says the document that appears on my screen, "we believe actions speak louder than words! That is why we have dedicated teams who are on the go in Red Bull Minis converted into refrigerators on wheels. The teams help consumers sprout wings just at the point when they most need a quick lift in everyday situations."

It seems I'm being invited to become a "Red Bull Sampler" - someone who hands out free cans of drink to potential customers. "One minute you might be in hospital sampling weary staff, the next you could be on a parachute drop zone, helping people live life to the extreme," says the invitation. But I make an excuse and leave.

The next door is labelled Student High Fliers, and here they want to sign me up as a Red Bull Student Brand Manager. "Likely tasks in the week of a Student Brand Manager may involve brainstorming ideas with the local sales teams, producing a story for the local or student press, feeding back information to Red Bull HQ on the latest drinking trends in your union bar, or writing a proposal to recommend Red Bull's involvement in a new marketing initiative on campus."

It sounds exciting and dangerous - like working for MI5, or something. And there is even talk of "complementing" my student grant. The invitation ends with the question, "Fancy joining this grinning bunch?" But, alas, my student days are over.

Passing from room to room, I quickly see that Red Bull is more than a beverage. For, like the giants of the soft-drinks world, the Cokes and the Pepsis, this single-brand Austrian company has been busy weaving its name into an entire lifestyle. Sports sponsorship leads the way, with snow-boarding, trial biking and "extreme kayaking" most prominent. Events have names such as Red Bull Mountain Mayhem or Red Bull Trash And Crash, and the talk is of "endurance junkies" and "crowd-pumping adrenaline", of "hardcore water action" and an "explosive head-to-head contest".

After so much peripheral pumping and thrashing, it comes as a relief to find myself at the core of the operation at last. Here, in the relative calm of a "Frequently Asked Questions" page, I am invited to enquire, "What does 'energy drink' really mean?"

An energy drink, says Red Bull, is a drink that "due to its exceptional composition provides your body with extra energy during times of increased physical strain or stress". The composition in question includes taurine, glucuronolactone and caffeine, "as well as important vitamins and carbohydrates". The effects of these ingredients, says the manufacturer, are "increased physical endurance, improved reaction speed and concentration, increased mental alertness, an improved overall feeling of well-being, a stimulated metabolism and increased stamina." From man to superman in one sip.

A sideways glance at a dictionary tells me that taurine is the name given to amido-ethyl-sulphonic acid, a substance obtained in 1826 from ox bile and contained in the bile of most other animals. The bovine connection clearly explains the name Red Bull, and I toy with the idea that all that extreme charging about might be down to nothing more than an excess of ox bile. But the website sets me straight.

Frequently Asked Question: What exactly is taurine? "Taurine is a conditionally essential amino acid, which naturally occurs in the body. At times of extreme physical exertion, the body no longer produces the required amounts of taurine, and a relative deficiency results. Taurine acts as a metabolic transmitter and additionally has a detoxifying effect and strengthens cardiac contractility."

Surprisingly, "What do 'conditionally essential', 'metabolic transmitter' and 'cardiac contractility' mean in plain English?" is not a frequently asked question, so I am left guessing. However, I do glean that the B-complex vitamins contained in Red Bull help to maintain physical stamina, and that glucuronolactone accelerates the elimination of toxic substances from the body. I also learn that the carbohydrates mentioned are almost entirely sugars in the form of glucose and sucrose, and that there is roughly the same amount of caffeine in a 250ml can of Red Bull as in a cup of filter coffee.

Sated with science and damned statistics, I begin tunnelling out of the Red Bull complex. But, before I know it, I have been lured into a warren of smaller energy-drink websites. Something at the back of my mind - something that looks remarkably like a phone bill with my name on it - is urging me to get out, and fast. But how can I? For to pass among these dandified cans - to see the graphics and read the comments and reviews - is to pull the ring on a tinned history of popular culture in the past half decade. Battery, Bawls, Hype, Solstis, Red Devil, White Night, XTC, Jones Whoop Ass, Merlin's Energy Source . . . the names define each segment of the target audience, from under-age clubber to new-age goth, from swatting student to sweating athlete. There's something here for the frantic executive and the stressed taxi-driver, the heroic hospital doctor and the flagging ward sister. And with every can comes an implied promise. You need to get up? You want to stay up? Get this down you, and we guarantee you'll keep it up.

While the more colourful-sounding ingredients vary - the herbs and amino acids, the vitamins and exotic plant extracts that could come as easily from a cosmetics or toiletries bottle as from a can of pop - many have at their heart a simple yet powerful blend of caffeine and sugars.

Bawls derives its "sweet yet spicy flavour" from the "legendary Guarana berry of the Amazonian Rainforest" which contains "a naturally occurring caffeine", while Jones Whoop Ass "kicks your butt" with guarana, caffeine and ginseng. The makers of Merlin's Energy Source explain that guarana farming is a profitable way of saving the rainforest, reminding us that Merlin was "a master of the forces of Mother Nature" who blended herbs, roots and water "to induce love, health, power and knowledge".

According to the makers of Tiger Shot, "we have now reached the 'plus' age featuring energy-packed drinks and foods that replenish the body's need for vitamins and active substance". Somewhere on the web-page, a pair of mannequins have jerky sex beside the words "Sex Power". The animation is too much for my tired computer. The screen freezes yet again and, in exasperation, I switch off and go to bed.

The energy drink in the UK has a longer history than in any other country, thanks to a single brand that became a household name. In 1927, a Newcastle pharmacist invented a beverage that would provide sick children with glucose, the sugar that circulates in the bloodstream as "blood sugar" and that cells use as their main source of energy. As Glucozade - a name which was later changed to Lucozade - it was one of Britain's biggest-selling soft drinks for more than half a century.

It was in the mid-80s that everything started to change. The first hint that something was afoot came in 1985, when Lucozade, now owned by SmithKline Beecham, used the decathlete Daley Thompson to promote the new message of "everyday energy replacement". A year later, serious complications began to set in.

First, a new breed of glucose-based "sports drinks" started to appear, beginning with Dexters in 1986. Lucozade responded by producing its own sports drink, and so strong was the familiar name that Lucozade Sport immediately established a lead that it has maintained ever since. But hot on the heels of sports drinks came a wave of continental-style "energy drinks". Less dependent on glucose, and incorporating a number of other "functional" ingredients such as caffeine, these had been quietly brewing in Europe, where Lucozade was virtually unheard of.

Before long, consumers' heads were buzzing - not with an excess of sugar and assorted stimulants, but with the sheer variety of different types of so-called "smart" drinks - drinks that purported to perform some function other than simple thirst quenching. The Lucozade name alone now appears on five different brands, sports drinks can be isotonic, hypertonic or hypotonic, and the situation gets more complicated by the week. Even the shopkeepers are confused, judging by the latest briefing to retailers published by Zenith International, a soft-drinks consultant.

Zenith makes a stab at dividing the brands into three categories, which it names "refreshment energy", "sports" and "functional energy". Since 1995, says the briefing, there have been more than 40 launches, including Indigo, Lipovitan B3, Oasis Revitaliser, Red Card and various updates of Purdey's. "The greatest focus of attention has been on whether all the non-glucose newcomers could create a coherent new segment in its own right. Lucozade's launch of Solstis in 1999 effectively acknowledged that a new segment has been created by Red Bull, making three in all."

But a glance at the pie charts and bar graphs has me reaching out for a cup of good, strong coffee. Is an energy drink not a functional drink? Is a sports drink not an energy drink? I am helplessly adrift in a sea of fizz when the name Karen Hambly appears on my screen. Hambly is a sports scientist, who a couple of years back, when the market started going crazy, took it upon herself to create a web page that cut through the babble and explained in clear terms the intended functions of the different types of smart drink, and the why and when of who should be drinking them. It is the pick-me-up I am looking for.

"Until the last few years," says Hambly's document, "the functional drinks have been geared towards replacing and maintaining either the fluid (water) or the fuel (sugars for energy) plus some of the vitamins and minerals (electrolytes) lost by the body. Generally this loss occurs during exercise and therefore most people refer to these beverages as 'sports drinks'. The sports drinks are the 'replacers and maintainers' in the functional drinks world."

Sports drinks come in three types - isotonic, hypotonic and hypertonic (it has to do with the strength of the solution in the drinks compared with that of your body fluids). The thrifty, says Hambly, can achieve much the same result simply by tossing a pinch of salt into a mug of warm water and then stirring in greater or lesser amounts of glucose.

The most recent kind of functional energy drink she calls "enhancers", and these have nothing to do with replacing energy and fluid: "In fact, if you want to use these drinks before, during or after exercise some brands suggest drinking equal quantities of water with their product."

Enhancers are intended for use in times of increased stress or strain, which for most of us "is more likely to be pressure at work, exams, driving, or even a heavy night out on the town, rather than intense exercise". They work, Hambly explains, by improving concentration, mental endurance and reaction times, as well as physical endurance. And they can be divided into two groups based on their key ingredients: first come the arousers or elixirs (Hambly gives Lazarus and Purdey's as examples), and these are herbal-based, containing substances such as ginseng ("some schools of thought put its benefits down to a placebo effect"), but nothing at all that should keep you awake at night. And then come the stimulation drinks, "possibly the most interesting drinks because of what they can do".

Once upon a time, there was a man called Dietrich Mateschitz, and he worked for Unilever. Mateschitz frequently travelled to Asia, where he would meet local managers. After a long-haul flight, he was invariably exhausted. So his Asian friends introduced him to certain revitalising syrups that they were in the habit of consuming. Suitably revitalised, he saw a business opportunity staring him in the face.

Mateschitz worked with a firm called TC Pharmaceuticals in Bangkok to produce a non-carbonated drink called Red Bull Kratingdaeng for sale in the Far East. He then set about formulating a fizzy but less syrupy version for the European market, and by 1987 he was ready to launch his product in his native Austria. Today, Red Bull is sold in 42 countries.

When it came to Britain six years ago, Red Bull called itself an energy drink, but found itself up against Lucozade, the local brew. So, two years later, the word "energy" on British cans was changed to "stimulation", and the Bull never looked back. Last year, says Zenith, functional energy drinks "literally took off", with volume up 127% and value of sales almost trebling. Almost three quarters of those sales are of Red Bull, and single cans of the stuff actually outsold equivalent units of Coca-Cola in British supermarkets last year. "On current trends," says Zenith's briefing to retailers, "Red Bull could overtake Pepsi and Sunny Delight within three years." And so it goes on.

Mateschitz is now a multi-squillionnaire, right? "You probably wouldn't be far off," says Kate Broe, one of only 14 staff employed at Red Bull's modest UK headquarters on the eighth floor of a west-London office building. She met him once, at the company's HQ outside Salzburg, and mistook him for the cleaner in his jeans and T-shirt. "He's totally unassuming," she says. "And he keeps himself out of the press."

Which is more than can be said for his concoction. In the few years since it appeared on British shelves, Red Bull has acquired a wild reputation with only occasional prodding from its manufacturer. Mixed with vodka (VRB), tequila (TRB) or Cockspur's rum (Cock 'n' Bull), it's powers of stimulation are regularly credited with keeping clubbers awake for longer, thereby increasing their capacity for alcohol and enhancing their proclivity for anti-social behaviour. The City of London, said one recent newspaper report, is fuelled on a high-octane blend of champagne and Red Bull, with dealers and brokers consuming prodigious quantities of "Chambulls" at the close of each day's business. No wonder the Police Federation talks of no-go areas.

Alongside this self-perpetuating inferno of public awareness is an oral mythology that has grown up among Red Bull customers themselves. Take the ingredient taurine. "Because of its name," says Broe, "a lot of people think it's an extract of bull's testicles, or bile from bulls' stomachs. In fact, the glucuronolactone and the taurine we use are both pharmaceutically produced. But the minute the word of mouth dies - the minute it isn't liquid Viagra or legal cocaine - the minute it doesn't contain more caffeine than 12 espressos, then it's, like, would the last person out turn off the lights. The whole essence of Red Bull marketing isn't that we tell people what it is and why they should be drinking it. It's a word-of-mouth thing, and that's the kind of marketing you can't pay for."

Broe talks a lot about "senseful" drinking, a word that I initially mistake for "sensible". But there's a subtle difference. "It's when people play devil's advocate with themselves," she says. "Okay, they're pumping alcohol into their body. But then maybe they want to mix it with natural fruit juices. Or they'll smoke 20 cigarettes a day, but it's okay because they go to the gym twice a week. You know that twisted mentality that says, 'I'm going to do it, but I might as well do it that little bit safer'? That will be the growth area. In future, people will want added value from everything they're drinking. There will be this whole pharmacy of drinks you drink because you want to wake up or you want to fall asleep or you want to be relaxed or whatever."

Surprisingly, perhaps, she maintains that Red Bull never set out to be cool. "But we had to choose fun ways to underline the brand functionality, and one of the ways that naturally happened, because of the popular culture of the time, was in terms of clubbing. These people were probably not drinking a lot of alcohol, they wanted to stay up all night, and the product just proved itself. And then they took it out of that environment and said, if it worked for me when I was clubbing it'll work for me when I'm studying, and if it worked for me when I'm studying, it'll work for me at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when I'm at work. And that's how it snowballs, slowly, slowly. But we're not out there saying, 'Come all ye nurses, you'll save more lives if you drink Red Bull.' "

However, lest you go charging off with the idea that all this word-of-mouth snowballing is an entirely spontaneous, uncontrolled process, listen to how Red Bull has been laying siege to one of its biggest unconquered markets - the US. "Red Bull isn't legally available in New York," says Broe. "It hasn't got a distributor. But there's some being shipped from Ireland because some of the New York club owners are from Dublin. They started giving the product just to waiters and waitresses, because they're the guys who are working all night. And one waitress had strapped the can to her tray and was walking around with it, and Demi Moore and Brad Pitt were asking, 'What's that?' The waitress told them, 'It's our drink because we're working so hard and it keeps us going. We're not selling it. It's just for us guys.' And the next thing you've got is magazines saying that Brad Pitt and Demi Moore are drinking the product, and you see it being thrown into the backs of cabs between clubs."

Does she mean that the company has been deliberately restricting supplies of Red Bull to the US in order to make it seem more desirable? "Oh yes. We really had to go for those opinion-formers to start with - the real cream of the star bars and clubs. It takes patience. If we were everywhere quickly, we would end up destroying the market. It would be a fad. But we can take our time, because we know the product works."

Not everyone is convinced on that last point. I ask Ian Tokelove of the Food Commission, a body that represents consumer interests, what he thinks about the explosion of sports and energy drinks. "You're buying into the image," he says. "You're paying a lot of money for something you could make at home incredibly cheaply - for pence. But then you wouldn't get that lovely can and you wouldn't get the sexy marketing."

It is certainly true that "smart drinks" sell at what the soft-drinks industry coyly calls "a premium price". The off-licence that sold me my £1.20 can of Red Bull, for example, would have made around 40p on the sale, three times more than on a single can of cola. But isn't it worth paying more for a drink that improves my performance? Tokelove concedes that, to a professional athlete, a small physical effect might make the world of difference. "But to any average member of the public, these drinks are going to have no effect on so-called performance."

The main problem, he says, is that consumers don't really understand what, if anything, the various ingredients do. "These drinks are crammed-packed full of sugar. People don't realise that when these drinks make the energy claim, what they are in fact saying is that this product is full of sugar and is therefore not necessarily good for the health. It can affect the way you behave. You will get a sugar rush - get jittery, and so on. It's basically the body trying to cope with the extra sugar."

He is sceptical about the more exotic ingredients - taurine, for instance, which Red Bull's Kate Broe states is present in human breast milk, and is currently undergoing trials for its possible beneficial effects on racehorses. "I'm quite sure that somebody somewhere will have done a small survey that has found that it does have a very small effect, which they can then blow out of all proportion," says Tokelove. "But as regards rigorous scientific testing, I'm completely unaware of any. One person will say one thing and another will say another, and if you're promoting a product you will naturally pick the favourable research."

An astonishing conversation that I subsequently have with a leading researcher in the field brings home to me just how hard it is to form any meaningful opinion on the question of whether this or that ingredient "works". Professor Jack James, head of the department of psychology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, has for some years been studying the effects of caffeine. Everybody I have spoken to so far, from sports scientist to consumer guardian, has taken for granted that, like it or not, caffeine functions as a stimulant. Does the professor accept that caffeinated drinks can therefore improve physical and mental performance? I expect him to prevaricate, but he is quite definite. "Absolutely not," he says. "If you like, I can take you through the argument."

For a long time, says James, it has been generally believed that caffeine improves the ability to think quickly and clearly. "This is a belief that has been in the scientific literature since the beginning of the 20th century. And it's a belief that is held, not unreasonably, by caffeine consumers themselves. As they will tell you, when they get up in the morning, they feel a bit sleepy and groggy, but when they have their first cup of coffee they feel ready to face the day.

"The scientific literature is based on many many studies which, on first impressions, would tend to support this interpretation. The classic sort of study is a double-blind challenge-type study where you have, for example, a group of subjects who will come into a laboratory to do a number of tests of their performance. They are assigned into two groups at random. One group receives caffeine and the other group receives a placebo."

The subjects are all tested before taking a drink or capsule, and then some time later, and it has often been observed that the subjects who have received the caffeine perform better than the ones who did not. The obvious interpretation, and seemingly the only interpretation, says James, is that it's the caffeine that's making the difference.

"But there's one problem, and the problem is this. Caffeine is very widely consumed. Indeed, it's consumed by more than 80% of the population of the world on a daily basis. Hence, when the subjects are recruited, generally the majority of them will be caffeine consumers. Typically, the subjects are required to abstain from consuming any caffeine before they come into the laboratory. So they are in a period of abstinence. And we know from the pharmacological evidence that when they present in the laboratory they are in the early stages of caffeine withdrawal. So, the question then becomes: does the caffeine actually elevate performance above levels that are normal for that person, or is it just reversing the effects of withdrawal, which are, in fact, degrading their performance?"

When James conducted tests with subjects who were no longer suffering withdrawal symptoms, the results supported his suspicions. Caffeine does not elevate performance, he says. "It just reverses the effects of caffeine withdrawal. If you are repeatedly exposed to caffeine, you become physically dependent on it, which means if you stop taking it abruptly, you suffer from discomfort, which encourages you to use it again."

James, who abstains from both tea and coffee in the interests of his long-term health, believes that caffeine manufacturers are deliberately using energy drinks to create a new market, targeting young people. "In previous decades, the inclusion of caffeine in drinks such as Coca-Cola was always justified by the manufacturers on the grounds that it enhanced taste. What's happening with these new drinks is a sea change. They are marketing drinks containing caffeine for its asserted pharmacological properties. The advertisements frequently use a style and language that comes from the drug culture, and I'm amazed that parents aren't up in arms about this."

Something else the professor says sticks in my mind. Humans don't naturally like the bitterness of coffee, he says. But we learn to associate it with the drug on which we have become dependent. I make a mental note to remind myself, next time I slit open a fresh block of vacuum-packed coffee, that I don't really like the aroma, I only think I do. And I find myself wondering whether, if I had been introduced to caffeine through Red Bull or one of its sickly stable-mates, I wouldn't come to love the taste of energy drinks also.

Oh, didn't I mention? I finally plucked up the courage to drink my can of Red Bull. In the interests of research, I approached it with an open mind. But somehow I couldn't entirely wipe from my brain a line I had read in a newspaper article. "Taurine?" said one anonymous taster on being told what he had just sampled. "Are you sure there aren't a couple of letters too many at the start of that word?"